Chapter Text
The first time they called Daenys a mad madwoman, she was only a child.
Her dreams had come on early and there was so much excitement among the family. A dragon dreamer meant so much and more than that, it proved they were better, that Targaryens were simply above the houses they ruled. Everyone listened so intently as she tried to recall all the details of each dream. It helped that she'd been right about a Blackfyre supporter lingering in court and attempting to garner enough support to repeat the whole affair.
But a nervous, mumbling girl is hardly someone to turn to for political advice. Especially, when all she can give is strange, cryptic visions of symbols rather than the legendary visions of her predecessor. If a second Doom was coming, all she would see is a cloud of ash or a crumbling map, certainly frightening but extremely unclear in what it actually portends or how to handle it.
She was waiting outside a council meeting when she heard some lord say it. She had stuttered out the vision from the previous night and gone to wait in the corridor for Father to take her back, nothing useful, a falling star that burns brightly and quickly leaving several more behind it that blink out one by one until only one remains. She could hear the frustrations of them all from behind the door and then one, she's not sure which, shouted “Why are we putting such stock in the ramblings of a madwoman in the making?” She also heard the way he was silenced.
But she knew he was right. Madness ran in her blood and she could feel it taking root within her.
And it only seemed to grow as she aged.
She was never the glorious figure she was named for.
Every dream she ever had left her screaming and rambling in the night. All the knowledge she was ever granted was the simple fact that tragedy was always due and there was no real way to prevent it meaningfully, but that was hardly something she needed a prophecy to know. Worst of all, it renders time meaningless. How can she not be mad when she feels like she’s seeing the world as it was, is, and will be all at once? Is madness not the loss of reality? Of connection to the world?
Besides, there’ll be at least one child labelled mad with how prodigiously the family has been breeding in recent years. It may as well be her.